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The tyranny of story
By Ian Robinson, 16 March 2023
Story was once a tool for understanding the world and for improving it. The hero or heroine always defeated the monsters.
Today, story has become a weapon for undermining the world’s values and for creating and nourishing real monsters who would destroy that world.
The ability to tell and absorb stories has always been an important distinguishing feature of the human species, and one of the traits that distinguishes us from other species. The human ability to tell and absorb stories has materially helped us evolve the complex civilisation that we inhabit today.
"Stories and storytelling are our life blood. We need them to be human. The real and pressing danger to human civilisation is not stories in themselves, or even stories that are unapologetically untrue, but stories that claim to be true when they are not."
Ian Robinson
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It’s easy to envisage other universes, governed by slightly different laws of physics, in which no intelligent life, nor indeed …
The tyranny of story
Story was once a tool for understanding the world and for improving it. The hero or heroine always defeated the …
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Mary Wollstonecraft has had something of a revival in recent years. Though considered the mother of first-wave feminism, the 18th-century …
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See current affairs through the eyes of cartoonist Matt Bissett-Johnson.
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